Week 5

This week has been quiet as lessons went on as usual. We carried out another source inquiry on the Cuban Missiles Crisis for the 75-minute tutorial and it seemed like that class digested the feedback I gave them well. They did not only focus on just listing the evidence from the sources but also did up their own evaluation in answer to the question.   That was heartening.  However, many issues remain.  One, they need to translate their thinking skills into writing as many of them are still not able to write a proper essay or even answer the question.  Two, they are able to do it in groups but they do not seemed to be able to do it on an individual basis.  While peer learning helps them to learn, we still need to inculcate individual exam skills to them so that they can do well in their exams.

Strategies wise, we have been using source inquiry or source based methods for three weeks.  The students are more or less used to the style and method of using sources.  After much discussion with Jasper, we concluded that providing them with sources is also an avenue through which we can actually provide them with more content. This allows students to understand the topic better and make linkages to the lecture material that is sometimes rushed through due to the time constrain in the curriculum.  I was encouraged when I had two students from 1241B asking me for more sources to be provided in subsequent lessons.  While they represented a small proportion of the class, I was glad that the strategy was at least reaching out to a few of them.

For next week, after much brainstorming, we have decided to use a role play for the next tutorial in order to spice things up for the tutorial.  The conventional view of history as a subject is always how boring it is.  However, I decided to come up with the idea of a roleplay.  The suggestion originally came from Jian Lin.  I took the liberty to expand on the idea and see how it goes in the next week.  If it works out well with the classes, it will be a strategy that we can incorporate for future topics that can allow roleplay to be effective.  I did realize that as I gave out the instructions of the roleplay, the students stirred in excitement.  Their reactions made me deduce that the students, despite being 17 or 18-year-olds, still crave for a break out of the monotony of classroom lessons.  In our efforts to be creative in lesson planning, the students exhibit their appreciation by the way they react.  Granted that the more studious ones may find the roleplaying exercise a little redundant and even puerile at some levels, most of them need a fresh change from the conventional didactic approach.  With the occasional changes in tone of the lesson, making it more lighthearted and fun such as roleplaying, it may serve to reach out to students who have lost their interest or lost some steam in the subject.  However, whether it delivers effective learning is yet to be seen.  Very much depends on the research the students do and how they make use of the time allocated for their presentation in their roles.